While there’s little wrong with the songwriting, only Love Is the Key By the Sea and Beautiful Morning linger in the memory, the latter coming on like a nature lover’s remix of the Jam’s romantic English Rose.

Kouyate’s playing remains at its heart, pulsing, ingenious and spellbinding.

These nine new songs see the band’s gift for melody and grasp of pop’s dynamics tweaked into transcendent shapes by the late house master Philippe Zdar and xx producer Rodaidh McDonald.

While it’s an emotional listen, I Came From Love is not a difficult record, musically.

If the interplay between the band’s instruments makes gleeful mincemeat of genre, singing guitarist Isaac Wood’s equally remarkable lyrics regularly float to the top of the mix. Half-spoken, half-sung, they riff on granular scene references (“I told you I loved you in front of Black Midi”) and Gen-Z witticisms, but pack in plenty of timeless tenderness and anomie.

Even when the tempo drops, the quality doesn’t, the rich imagery of Trick Out the Truth being a case in point. Effortlessly classy.

Garbus's voice is jostled too much amid the hectic production to allow its personality to shine through and, with some notable exceptions (the call and response of Real Thing), hooks are hurried on before properly taking root.

The resulting album is rich in imagination, and--at times, most notably on Bull and Brando--surprisingly accessible

If these songs occasionally feel underwritten – many are brief, jazzy sketches that seem to wander in and meander back out again – they contrast pointedly with the overwritten, attention-deficit music crafted to punch out on today’s Spotify playlists. Sometimes all you need is a little tenderness.

Expectations are subverted, as when the opulence of the harpsichord is manipulated beyond recognition or a piercing shout infiltrates a rhythm. Since every composition holds this tension within its structure, it feels like an aesthetic choice rather than a gimmick. The more time you spend with Age Of, the more Lopatin’s instrumentations reveal depth.

Overall, it’s not as gleeful as their last one, but melodic light relief abounds, as on the Belinda Carlisle outtake that is It’s Not Living (If It’s Not With You). Those conclusions feel earned, not merely hashtagged.

By now, most listeners will know where they stand on Vedder’s distinctive holler and the band’s beefiness; little on Dark Matter is likely to enchant gen Z away from their own heroes. But the faithful will rejoice.

The subtle, unfurling I Quit, meanwhile, marries guitar, piano and percussion to create an arpeggiating Doppler effect strafed by electronics. “This is my stop, this is the end of the trip,” sings Yorke. In the same breath he’s ruminating on “conscience” and “brotherhood” and “a new path out of the madness, to wherever it goes”. That path may well be shaped like a smile.

Every song is a wonder. It is unlikely Angels & Queens will inspire many imitators of its retro-future soul, its damaged doo-wop. It’s simply too good to be copied.

The English songwriter’s spacey, super-melodic, immaculately produced pop casts a wonderful spell when it works, particularly on lead single Religion (U Can Lay Your Hands on Me) or the swooning, filtered coda to The Stage, as endless as summer seems in early July.

Every track on We Are King putters and glides by quite smoothly. It’s only gradually you notice how complex this dream state actually is.

The Long Goodbye can feel heavy-handed: even those phoned-in messages from famous friends (Mindy Kaling, Asim Chaudhry) sound jarring. Ultimately, though, Ahmed delivers, offering up some clever writing on this powerful concept album.

No chance of paunchy homage here; lyrics cluttered with Munch, war and the Chartists and the tightly coiled energy of its best moments, such as Misguided Missile and instrumental closer Mayakovsky, suggest they are fronting up to middle age rather well.

Andrew Fearn’s deathlessly inventive compositions stare you down, defying you to find them simplistic – the title track’s turbo-charged electro, and the pointillist electronics of Top Room, are just two cases in point.

Harding is her own woman, an arresting vocalist whose mannered deliveries--from chanteuse to jazzy--and intense themes defy obvious influence.

While there are still nods to the polite dinner-party soundtrack feel of her early work – the string-drenched Courage, for example – this is a much bolder statement of intent.

Musically, too, there are tempestuous moments (Missing Children; Sing Me a Song), but the quartet only soar when the lights are dimmed and ambience takes precedence over energy.

Looser, grungier, fuzzier and yet more abrupt, perhaps, than latter-day Wilco offerings, Star Wars is proof that you can get considerably more than you pay for.

Empowerment, unity and joy combine to catchy effect, with the exceptional Kidjo now leader of a new generation.

A plethora of found sounds and jazz inflections keep everything compelling. But the hovering, sustained and gliding elements miss the brave sensory overload of Aviary and the pop nous of Wilderness. The best track is the simplest: Meyou, a warped, minimal vocal meditation.

With its silky delicacy, percussion that plays with everything from trip-hop to neosoul, and that deft voice gliding through sublime imagery, this is a quietly enriching and powerful first album.

You could dismiss Cheat Codes as dad rap, but this record is absolute joy from end to end.

It brims with the sense of release and joy that comes from the tiniest escape from confinement.